Likud, Smotrich Parties to Deploy Nearly 2,000 Activists to Arab Polling Stations | Israel Politics Post
Likud, Smotrich Parties to Deploy Nearly 2,000 Activists to Arab Polling Stations
The ruling party and Religious Zionism cite unsubstantiated fraud concerns for the deployment, which the Joint List calls a racist campaign and which election officials say addresses a problem that barely exists.
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By Israel Politics Post Staff·Published
An Arab Israeli woman votes in the northern village of Maghar during a past Knesset election · Source: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP, via The Times of Israel
Likud and Religious Zionism, the party led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, announced plans to send close to 2,000 activists to polling stations in Arab communities for the October 27 election, citing unsubstantiated concerns about voter fraud, The Times of Israel reported. The activists would operate outside the official party-observer system already in place at every polling station.
Joint List chairman Yousef Jabareen called the move part of a "racist campaign" aimed at his community. Central Elections Committee Director General Dean Livne pushed back on the fraud claims directly, saying "there is no fraud in Israel. If it exists, it's on the margins," a line political analyst Assaf Shapira echoed in warning that an unofficial activist presence risks tipping into voter intimidation rather than legitimate oversight.
The plan follows a similar move by Likud in 2019, when the party deployed cameras inside Arab polling stations, a decision that was widely blamed for suppressing Arab turnout that year and that Israel's Central Elections Committee later moved to restrict.
The announcement came the same day opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot pledged that, if elected, he would end Hamas rule in Gaza within 18 months, telling supporters bluntly: "As long as Benjamin Netanyahu remains in power, Hamas will remain in power."
